HashiCorp surprised the open-source community when it announced it was changing Terraform’s license to the Business Source License. As a popular infrastructure-as-code DevOps solution, the licensing change had significant ramifications, leading The Linux Foundation to fork the project and create OpenTofu.

Oracle’s Terri Noyes, Product Management Director, outlined the change.

Our latest Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) Cloud Manager update, 24.1.1.1, is now available.

In this release, we have updated the versions of key Cloud Manager technology stack components to maintain security standards and improve supportability.

In addition, we have switched from using the Terraform infrastructure as code tool to OpenTofu. Note that this does not impact Cloud Manager functionality.

We highly recommend that you uptake this new 24.1.1.1 release of Cloud Manager at your earliest convenience.

Oracle’s adoption of OpenTofu is a major win for the fledgling project and a warning shot HashiCorp would do well to heed.

In a recent interview, Mr. Nguyen shed light on the bank’s ambitious migration to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and its profound impact on Techcom Bank’s operations.

“Before we even moved to AWS, we were on very old legacy systems,” Mr. Nguyen explained. “So when we decided to move to AWS, we had to move all of those systems into the cloud as well.”

The challenge was formidable: seamlessly transitioning critical banking systems to the cloud without disrupting business operations. However, armed with a strategic vision and a commitment to innovation, Mr. Nguyen and his team embarked on the arduous task.

“Within 18 months of signing the contract and partnering with AWS, we were able to migrate 60% of our workload onto AWS,” Mr. Nguyen proudly shared. This feat, achieved in a relatively short timeframe, speaks volumes about the bank’s determination and the effectiveness of the migration process.

The key systems successfully migrated to AWS are Oracle Fraud Detection, Anti-Money Laundering (AML), and Oracle Financial Services Analytical Application (OFSAA). These critical components form the backbone of Techcom Bank’s operations, safeguarding against financial fraud and ensuring regulatory compliance.

The migration’s benefits extend beyond mere technological upgrades. Mr. Nguyen noted a significant uptick in productivity and agility among bank staff. “People are getting more agile, nimble, self-serving, and more self-initiative in what they need,” he remarked. This newfound empowerment has ushered in a culture of innovation and efficiency within the organization.

Moreover, Techcom Bank’s migration to AWS has yielded tangible cost savings. “We were able to reduce costs by up to 20% if managed correctly,” Mr. Nguyen revealed. These savings, coupled with improved operational efficiencies, underscore the bank’s financial prudence in embracing cloud technology.

The partnership with AWS professional services is central to the migration’s success. “The AWS professional services have partnered with us from day one,” Mr. Nguyen emphasized. Their expertise and support have been instrumental in navigating the complexities of cloud migration and ensuring a smooth transition.

Looking ahead, Mr. Nguyen remains optimistic about Techcom Bank’s future in the cloud. “The uptime has been significantly improved,” he noted, highlighting the reliability and resilience of AWS infrastructure. With the cloud business office and structured migration processes in place, the bank is poised to continue its journey of innovation and growth in the digital era.

As Techcom Bank blazes a trail of technological innovation in Vietnam’s banking sector, its partnership with AWS stands as a testament to cloud technology’s transformative power. In an industry where adaptability is paramount, Techcom Bank has demonstrated its readiness to embrace change and chart a course toward a more agile and resilient future.

Java 22, also known as Oracle JDK 22, is a testament to Oracle’s unwavering commitment to empowering developers and organizations worldwide. Georges Saab, Senior Vice President of Oracle Java Platform and Chair of the OpenJDK Governing Board, expressed enthusiasm for the advancements introduced in Java 22, stating, “The new enhancements in Java 22 enable more developers to quickly and easily build and deliver feature-rich, scalable, and secure applications to help organizations across the globe grow their businesses.”

At the heart of Java 22 lie 12 JDK Enhancement Proposals (JEPs), meticulously crafted to enhance various facets of the Java language, APIs, and tools encompassed within the Java Development Kit (JDK). These enhancements span diverse functionalities, catering to the evolving needs of developers and organizations alike.

One of the cornerstones of Java 22 is integrating features from Project Amber, Project Loom, and Project Panama. Project Amber introduces several language enhancements, including Statements before super(…), Unnamed Variables and Patterns, String Templates, Implicitly Declared Classes, and Instance Main Methods. These additions simplify development workflows and enhance code readability and maintainability.

With its Structured Concurrency and Scoped Values features, Project Loom revolutionizes concurrent programming paradigms, offering developers enhanced error handling and observability capabilities. Similarly, Project Panama introduces the Foreign Function & Memory API and the Vector API, facilitating seamless interoperability with native code and delivering superior performance for vector computations.

Furthermore, Java 22 introduces significant updates to core libraries and tools, such as the Class-File API, Launch Multi-File Source-Code Programs, and Stream Gatherers. These enhancements empower developers with enhanced flexibility and productivity, simplifying complex tasks and boosting overall development efficiency.

Performance remains a focal point in Java 22, with the introduction of Region Pinning for G1. This feature reduces latency during garbage collection, enhancing system responsiveness and overall performance.

The release of Java 22 underscores Oracle’s steadfast commitment to driving innovation and fostering collaboration within the global Java community. By actively engaging with stakeholders through initiatives such as OpenJDK and the Java Community Process (JCP), Oracle continues to shape the future of Java, ensuring its relevance and longevity in an ever-evolving technological landscape.

“Java’s versatility and comprehensive toolset enable it to support the development of production-grade, mission-critical applications at scale, which positions it as a key enabling technology for innovative use cases such as generative AI,” remarked Arnal Dayaratna, Research Vice President of Software Development at IDC, highlighting the significance of Java’s continued evolution.

Mala Gupta, Java developer advocate at JetBrains, expressed her excitement about Java 22’s features designed to cater to developers of all skill levels. “Java is embracing a minimalist approach by continuing to reduce ceremonies around writing initial steps of code,” she said. “With constructor makeover (statements before super[…]), Java has proven again that it supports responsible innovation, and relaxing language constraints that existed from Java’s version 1.0 without breaking any existing code is very exciting.”

Tom Snyder, Oracle’s Vice President of Engineering for enterprise cloud-native Java, emphasized the tangible benefits of Java 22 for users of the Helidon web server. “The Helidon team recognized the value of virtual threads as soon as they were announced,” Snyder explained. “With Helidon 4, the team rewrote the Helidon web server to natively use virtual threads, which resulted in much better performance and increased developer productivity.”

As organizations navigate the complexities of digital transformation, Java remains a cornerstone of innovation. It enables businesses to harness the power of technology and drive growth. With Java 22, developers are empowered to unlock new possibilities, paving the way for a future of creativity, efficiency, and technological excellence.

Nvidia has been leading the charge on AI, with its GPUs and chips powering large language models across the industry. The company says its new platform supports “real-time generative AI on trillion-parameter large language models,” while delivering up to 25x less cost and energy performance compared to previous generations.

“For three decades we’ve pursued accelerated computing, with the goal of enabling transformative breakthroughs like deep learning and AI,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Generative AI is the defining technology of our time. Blackwell is the engine to power this new industrial revolution. Working with the most dynamic companies in the world, we will realize the promise of AI for every industry.”

The new architecture includes “six transformative technologies” that will help companies deploy generative AI, quantum computing, computer-aided drug design, and more.

Nvidia expects a number of major companies to adopt Blackwell.

“Oracle’s close collaboration with NVIDIA will enable qualitative and quantitative breakthroughs in AI, machine learning and data analytics,” said Larry Ellison, chairman and CTO of Oracle. “In order for customers to uncover more actionable insights, an even more powerful engine like Blackwell is needed, which is purpose-built for accelerated computing and generative AI.”

“Generative AI is critical to creating smarter, more reliable and efficient systems,” said Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Technologies. “Dell Technologies and NVIDIA are working together to shape the future of technology. With the launch of Blackwell, we will continue to deliver the next-generation of accelerated products and services to our customers, providing them with the tools they need to drive innovation across industries.”

“We are committed to offering our customers the most advanced infrastructure to power their AI workloads,” Satya Nadella, executive chairman and CEO of Microsoft. “By bringing the GB200 Grace Blackwell processor to our datacenters globally, we are building on our long-standing history of optimizing NVIDIA GPUs for our cloud, as we make the promise of AI real for organizations everywhere.”

Nvidia says AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle will be the first companies to offer Blackwell-powered cloud instances, as well as Applied Digital, CoreWeave, Crusoe, IBM Cloud and Lambda.

Oracle has long been the dominant player in the database market. Even as the cloud has grown in importance, Oracle has managed to carve out a meaningful share of the market, thanks in large part to the strength of its database platform. Many customers see it as a full turn-key solution, combining the cloud and database solutions necessary. In spite of that, according to a report by Bloomberg, Oracle’s database dominance may be under threat from cloud-first rivals.

Bloomberg cites the example of Shutterfly, which recently made the decision to move its database to the cloud. Despite relying on Oracle for years, the company decided to go in a different direction with the transition.

Read more: Larry Ellison Touts Oracle Cloud’s Reliability in Wake of AWS Outage

“The amount of time and energy that was consumed purely running just the plumbing was immense,” Chief Technology Officer Moudy Elbayadi said in an interview. A review of the existing options on the market led Shutterfly to conclude that Oracle’s solutions didn’t “fit our desires to have that level of openness and flexibility,” Elbayadi added.

Unfortunately for Oracle, Shutterfly isn’t an isolated example. JPMorgan, Nasdaq Inc, JetBlue Airways Corp, and Automatic Data Process Inc are among the list of companies transitioning to non-Oracle options.

“We have actually quite rapidly been reducing our Oracle footprint,” said Nikolai Larbalestier, Nasdaq’s senior vice president of cloud strategy and enterprise architecture. “There are plenty of good alternatives today.”

Part of the problem stems from the complexity involved in running Oracle’s database and the cost to the client company of doing so. Mythical Games CEO John Linden emphasized the issue, despite his firm being valued at $1.2 billion.

“Oracle hits us up every week,” he said. But “we’d have to have a massive team in place to run it appropriately.”

See also: Google, Microsoft, and Oracle Had the Most Vulnerabilities in Early 2021

Just as significant, Oracle’s tools seem to be developing a reputation for not being up to par with the latest developments, making the prospect of working with them unappealing to many developers.

“I can’t even hire people if I told them that we majorly use Oracle,” Yao Morin, chief data officer at JLL Technologies, told Bloomberg. “People are yearning for better tools.”

To be clear, Oracle is still the company to beat in the database market, especially among companies that want on-premise database solutions. Nonetheless, the company clearly has some significant areas it needs to improve on if it wants to remain relevant in the coming years. Otherwise, it may find itself in the same situation as IBM when personal computers replaced mainframes — the undisputed leader of a niche market.

Mark Sunday, CIO of Oracle, discussed the increasing need for enterprises to take a holistic, comprehensive, and automated approach towards information security in an interview with Michael Krigsman of CXOTALK:

Security is Increasingly a Big Part of the Discussion

It’s really been interesting to see the dramatic change in the awareness around security. Quite frankly, the threats have gotten much greater. Security is increasingly a big part of the discussion. If I look at the one area that my organization has increased year on year on year, it’s what we’re investing in security. We’re the norm in that. We’re not the exception. Then also the increased sophistication of the threats, the increased sophistication of the tooling, and so forth required, is putting more and more focus on this. It really becomes job one.

I think that boards have now become aware and that they are accountable to assure that the people, the processes, the technology, that all the steps that one needs to do in order to ensure the integrity, confidentially, privacy, and security, of not only a customer’s data, the company’s data, but in fact the employees data as well.

Security is Not Just the Role of the CIO

Security is getting its place at the table, whether it’s within the IT organizations, at the corporate level, or at the board level. Security has always been something that’s been out there, something that we’ve had to take into account, but more recently there have certainly been more high profile incidents that have highlighted just what the impact of security can have. But also it’s been highlighted that you need to have the focus that security is not just the role of the CIO, not just the role of the CISO, but it’s everyone’s responsibility.

It begins with making people aware of what they need to do, what the threats and the vulnerabilities are, and what their role is in defending against that. Security needs to be built into every line of code we write, every configuration we enable, every computer that we manage the configuration asset the patching level on and the updates on. It affects essentially most roles within the organization.

Every Enterprise Has the Security it Deserves

Just given the scale, size, complexity, and the opportunity for human error, you really need to take a holistic, comprehensive, and automated approach towards how you deal with configuration management, change management, and vulnerability management. All of these are key aspects. It’s very difficult if it’s done you know manually. You have to look at a comprehensive program that allows you to simplify, standardize, centralize, and automate all the aspects of how you deal with those things that you know could expose your company to security and privacy concerns.

Every Enterprise has the security it deserves. It begins at the very top. It truly begins with the board, CEO, the Executive Committee, to set the culture and to ensure that the people, process, technology, and the governance processes are in place to ensure the security of customers, companies, and employees information.

Related Articles:

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Oracle CEO: Three Big Things in the Gen 2 Cloud… Security, Security, Security

BCC has had a controversial few years, settling a massive equal pay lawsuit that has taken a toll on Europe’s largest local authority. According to BBC News, the BCC admitted in June that “the £760m equal pay liability was not only equivalent to the entire annual spending on services but was growing each month.”

To make matters worse, the BCC has been in the midst of migrating from a custom SAP setup to one based on Oracle, to handle its HR and finance operations. Unfortunately, the cost of the project has skyrocketed to £100 million from the initial £20 million it was supposed to cost.

According to BirminghamLive, new city council leader John Cotton says Oracle is not to blame, instead blaming poor implementation for the massive cost overrun:

But we do know that there is an issue with how the system is then tracking our financial transactions and HR transactions issues as well. That’s got to be fixed.

I’ve been really clear with the officers since coming in as leader that I expect them to be responsible for fixing this system and ensure it is properly implemented and be accountable for how they go about doing that. I’m also putting in strengthened governance arrangements to ensure accountability to myself as the leader and to the wider Cabinet team.

What we now know from the work that we’ve done is that this can and will be fixed, but there is a price tag that’s attached to that. We’ve been advised that could be up to £100 million to fix and fully implement the system.

I am clear that must not impact frontline services.

The BCC is providing a perfect example of how important it is to pick the right tool for the right job…something it clearly did not do.

Users looking to download the latest version of VirtualBox are in for a disappointment, with Oracle removing the downloads links to 7.0.10.

VirtualBox is a popular cross-platform virtualization option, giving users the ability to run guest operating systems in virtual machines at near-native speed. The latest version, 7.0.10, was well received and included support a number of major new features and performance enhancements.

Unfortunately, the download links for 7.0.10 have disappeared from the VirtualBox website. There has been no official notification or reason given.

We will update with more information as it becomes available.

Red Hat angered customers and the broader Linux community when it announced that RHEL source code would be restricted to paying customers and bound by an agreement that customers would not share or re-distribute such code. The move was widely seen as an attack on Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, and Oracle Linux, distros that offer 1:1 compatibility with RHEL. Many have also stated that Red Hat’s actions violate the GPL, at least in spirit, if not also in letter.

SUSE quickly responded to emphasize its commitment to open source principles and distance itself from Red Hat. The German company is now taking it a step further, with plans to fork RHEL to offer customers a viable option without having to get locked into Red Hat’s ecosystem.

Read More: Oracle Calls Out Red Hat and IBM Over RHEL Source Code

SUSE says the new distro will be “available to all without restrictions,” and the company plans to invest $10 million over the next few years to help fund its development.

“For decades, collaboration and shared success have been the building blocks of our open source community,” said Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, CEO of SUSE. “We have a responsibility to defend these values. This investment will preserve the flow of innovation for years to come and ensures that customers and community alike are not subjected to vendor lock-in and have genuine choice tomorrow as well as today.”

The new distro will not replace SUSE’s own SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE). In fact, SLE is already used by 60% of Fortune 500 companies, so there is little motivation to replace it. However, the decision acknowledges that many companies run mixed Linux environments and need freedom from vendor lock-in.

“This collaborative effort demonstrates SUSE’s deep-rooted commitment to fostering innovation and nurturing community-driven development, and it reinforces the fundamental values of open source software. We invite the community to actively engage and collaborate in shaping the future of this essential software,” said Dr. Thomas Di Giacomo, Chief Technology and Product Officer, SUSE. “We firmly believe this new RHEL-compatible Linux distribution, together with SUSE’s portfolio, will help the community and customers navigate unprecedented advancements in enterprise Linux, cloud computing, containerization, edge, AI/ML and other emerging technologies.”

See Also: Red Hat Continues Damage Control, Clarifies Term ‘Freeloader’

SUSE already has an ally in Rocky Linux’s Gregory Kurtzer. Kurtzer co-founded CentOS, another distro that provided 1:1 compatibility with RHEL before Red Hat purchased it and killed it off. The company replaced it with CentOS Stream, which it positioned upstream of RHEL. That makes CentOS Stream essentially a test version of what becomes RHEL rather than offering 1:1 compatibility with it. In response to Red Hat’s actions, Kurtzer founded Rocky Linux to deliver on CentOS’ original goals.

“The enterprise Linux community requires standardization, stability, and consistency,” said Gregory Kurtzer, CEO of CIQ and Founder of Rocky Linux. “CIQ is bringing stability to our partners, customers, and community, by building a broad coalition of like-minded companies, organizations, and individuals. SUSE has embodied the core principles and spirit of open source; CIQ is thrilled to collaborate with SUSE on advancing an open enterprise Linux standard.”

Red Hat has a long history of playing fast and loose with the GPL and open source principles and has been called out repeatedly for its behavior. The company may have pushed the envelope a little too far this time, and it seems the community and its competitors are rallying against it.

Red Hat drew widespread condemnation when it announced it would begin restricting access to RHEL source code to paying customers. In addition, the customer agreement prohibits customers from sharing and redistributing the source code or from using it to create a downstream distro. The move was seen as a way to target Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, and Oracle Linux, all of which are 1:1 compatible with RHEL and is widely believed to be in violation of the GPL.

Oracle has responded, calling out Red Hat and IBM for not being good open source citizens in a press release entitled, “Keep Linux Open and Free—We Can’t Afford Not To.” After first saying it made its Oracle Linux distro 1:1 compatible with RHEL in an effort to not further fragment the Linux community, the company laid out its case:

While Oracle and IBM have compatible Linux distributions, we have very different ideas about our responsibilities as open source stewards and about operating under the GPLv2. Oracle has always made Oracle Linux binaries and source freely available to all. We do not have subscription agreements that interfere with a subscriber’s rights to redistribute Oracle Linux. On the other hand, IBM subscription agreements specify that you’re in breach if you use those subscription services to exercise your GPLv2 rights. And now, as of June 21, IBM no longer publicly releases RHEL source code.

The blog post references a follow-up Red Hat post in which Mike McGrath, Vice President of Core Platforms Engineering, tried to justify the company’s decision by saying it was about paying Red Hat engineers for the work they do. Oracle then dissects the response, drilling down on the real motivation behind Red Hat and IBM’s decision:

Interesting. IBM doesn’t want to continue publicly releasing RHEL source code because it has to pay its engineers? That seems odd, given that Red Hat as a successful independent open source company chose to publicly release RHEL source and pay its engineers for many years before IBM acquired Red Hat in 2019 for $34 billion.

The blog goes on to mention CentOS. It is no surprise CentOS was top of mind for the author attempting to justify withholding RHEL source. CentOS had been a very popular free RHEL compatible distribution. In December 2020, IBM effectively killed it as a free alternative to RHEL. Two new alternatives to RHEL have sprung up in CentOS’s place: AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux. Now, by withholding RHEL source code, IBM has directly attacked them.

And perhaps that is the real answer to the question of why: eliminate competitors. Fewer competitors means more revenue opportunity for IBM.

Oracle also says it will try its best to maintain 1:1 compatibility with RHEL:

As for Oracle, we will continue pursuing our goal for Linux as transparently and openly as we always have while minimizing fragmentation. We will continue to develop and test our software products on Oracle Linux. Oracle Linux will continue to be RHEL compatible to the extent we can make it so. In the past, Oracle’s access to published RHEL source has been important for maintaining that compatibility. From a practical standpoint, we believe Oracle Linux will remain as compatible as it has always been through release 9.2, but after that, there may be a greater chance for a compatibility issue to arise. If an incompatibility does affect a customer or ISV, Oracle will work to remediate the problem.

Oracle then makes a commitment to never take the approach Red Hat is taking and welcoming downstream distros that want to base on Oracle Linux:

We want to emphasize to Linux developers, Linux customers, and Linux distributors that Oracle is committed to Linux freedom. Oracle makes the following promise: as long as Oracle distributes Linux, Oracle will make the binaries and source code for that distribution publicly and freely available. Furthermore, Oracle welcomes downstream distributions of every kind, community and commercial. We are happy to work with distributors to ease that process, work together on the content of Oracle Linux, and ensure Oracle software products are certified on your distribution.

Oracle’s stand is similar to one made by SUSE, in which that company also emphasized its commitment to open source principles.

Meanwhile, Red Hat has managed to do the seemingly impossible: unify the disparate Linux community and rival companies in condemnation of its actions.

Oracle bet big on health, purchasing medical records giant Cerner for $28 billion last year. According to Business Insider, Oracle Health laid off hundreds of employees Thursday, rescinded existing job offers, and eliminated some open positions.

Insider’s sources say laid-off employees will receive four weeks severance pay, as well as an additional week for every week of employment. Vacation days will also be paid out.

The impetus for the layoffs appears to be issues with Cerner’s contract with the US Department of Veterans Affairs, where unexpected issues have hampered rollout of the company’s platform. The issues were severe enough to trigger a contract renegotiation, one that will hold Cerner more accountable for issues and that led to less work for the company than previously anticipated.

In its latest quarterly results (via CNBC), Oracle reported revenue of $13.84 billion, beating analysts’ expectations of $13.74 billion. Similarly, earnings came in at $1.67 per share, beating expectations of $1.58 per share.

As CNBC points out, Oracle’s results are helping drive the stocks to new highs, with it “up 73% over the past 12 months.” As result, with the exception of Nvidia, Oracle’s stock has outperformed “all large-cap enterprise tech stocks” for the same period. The stock’s current price also makes 2023 the best year for Oracle investors since the dot-com boom.

The company’s current status is surprising to some who had written Oracle off as a bit player in the cloud market and felt the company was losing ground on too many fronts.

Much of the credit is going to founder Larry Ellison, who has helped the company make adjustments and catch up in critical markets.

“Let’s give him credit where it’s finally due,” said Eric Lynch, managing director of Scharf Investments. “The upside case is finally coming through.”

The company’s partnership with AI firm Cohere is also paying off, especially given Cohere’s focus on the enterprise. This makes it an ideal match for Oracle.

Ellison has been saying for years that Oracle had an advantage over its competitors, especially in the realm of integration, stability, and reliability.

“Let me close with a note that I’m going to paraphrase from a very large telecommunications company who uses our cloud and all the other three North American clouds — Google, Amazon and Microsoft,” Ellison said in late 2021. “And the note basically said the one thing we’ve noticed about Oracle, Oracle’s cloud, is that it never ever goes down. We can’t say that about any of the other clouds. We think this is a critical differentiator.”

It appears the industry is finally taking note of what Ellison has been saying all along.

Virtual healthcare options entered the mainstream during the pandemic, providing a safe, convenient way for patients to receive care. Post-pandemic, virtual care adoption shows no signs of abating.

“Globally, the need for secure, convenient, and on demand telehealth services is only growing,” said Stephanie Trunzo, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Health. “Integrating Zoom with Oracle Cerner Millennium is an important step in advancing telehealth options and giving patients increased options for care. This unified system enables caregivers to better engage and serve patients even when they are remote, helping reduce practitioner’s administrative burden and increasing access to care.”

“As people have adopted virtual meetings in workplaces and in their personal lives, they are increasingly seeking that same convenience, simplicity, and choice in healthcare. Telemedicine consultations and virtual visits provide options and access at the times and places that would be best for them,” said Heidi West, head of healthcare, Zoom. “Integrating Zoom with Oracle Cerner Millennium is the next step in expanding the use of this important healthcare tool to help make it easier for doctors to incorporate telemedicine into their practice to enhance the patient experience while reducing administrative overhead.”

Zoom famously turned to Oracle in mid-2020 as its infrastructure demands increased. The company has previously relied on AWS and Microsoft Azure but turned to Oracle for a major expansion, a move the industry took note of. A major motivation for the switch was the value Oracle provided in terms of scalability and security, and there are certainly few industries with the security requirements of healthcare.

“We recently experienced the most significant growth our business has ever seen, requiring massive increases in our service capacity. We explored multiple platforms, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure was instrumental in helping us quickly scale our capacity and meet the needs of our new users,” Zoom CEO Eric S. Yuan said at the time. “We chose Oracle Cloud Infrastructure because of its industry-leading security, outstanding performance, and unmatched level of support.”

As things return to normal post-pandemic, companies have become increasingly less lenient about remote work, even companies that came out strongly in favor early on. NetSuite now joins their ranks.

According to a slide presentation seen by Bloomberg, employees within a 45-minute commute of the company’s offices must come in at least twice a week. Senior VP David Rodman says the criteria covers most of the company’s employees.

Return-to-office mandates have been driven, in part, by deteriorating economic conditions, with companies look for any and all ways to reduce cost and improve efficiency. The good news for NetSuite employees is that they will still be able to work remotely three days a week.

According to Seeking Alpha, analyst John DiFucci sent a note to clients after meeting with Oracle Cloud’s leadership. DiFucci came away from the meeting impressed with what Oracle has to offer, especially with the company’s ability to build on its comprehensive suite of tech solutions. As a result, Oracle is in a position to deliver cloud services at “significantly” less cost than its larger competitors while offering twice the performance.

“While there doesn’t seem to be a single silver bullet, there may be hundreds of them, as Oracle has built upon the successes and shortfalls of those that came before it, while infusing decades of technology innovation that is the core of this company,” DiFucci wrote in an investor note.

“If it plays out as we expect, and given the ratable model, we’d expect the future to bode well for [Oracle Cloud Infrastructure] over time, … and soon,” DiFucci added.

DiFucci’s analysis echoes that of Monness, Crespi, Hardt analyst Brian White, who similarly came to the conclusion that Oracle was poised to be 2023’s big cloud winner:

“In our view, no company is immune to an economic downturn; however, we believe the tailwind of the Oracle Cloud and the stock’s modest valuation provide some downside protection,” White wrote to clients.

Java 20 is not a a long-term support (LTS) release, so it will only provide updates until version 21 comes out in six months. Nonetheless, this version provides a number of bug fixes and improvements.

“Instead of making tens of thousands of fixes and delivering close to one hundred JEPs (JDK Enhancement Proposals) every few years, as we did with yesteryear Major Releases, enhancements are delivered in leaner Feature Releases on a more manageable, predictable, six-month schedule,” writes Sharat Chander Director, Java SE Product Management. “The changes range from significant new features to small enhancements to routine maintenance, bug fixes, and documentation improvements. Each change is represented in a single commit for a single issue in the JDK Bug System.

“Of the 21,604 JIRA issues marked as fixed in Java 11 through Java 20 at the time of their GA, 15,420 were completed by people working for Oracle while 6,184 were contributed by individual developers and developers working for other organizations.”

Java 20 also includes a number of significant new features and improvements, including:

• (D)TLS Key Exchange Named Groups
• Add GarbageCollectorMXBean for Remark and Cleanup Pause Time in G1
• Unicode 15.0 Support
• Improved Control of G1 Concurrent Refinement Threads
• New JFR Event: jdk.InitialSecurityProperty
• New JFR Event: jdk.SecurityProviderService
• …and much more

For more information, check out Oracle’s full release announcement.

During the pandemic and crypto heyday, Nvidia’s GPUs were in short supply. The sudden uptick in demand for personal computers and crypto mining rigs combined to drive the price of Nvidia’s GPUs through the roof and make it almost impossible to actually buy one.

Those days may return faster than anyone — except Nvidia, of course — may like. At the GTC 2023 Keynote yesterday, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang made it clear that Nvidia is all-in on AI.

“We are at the iPhone moment of AI,” Huang said during his keynote, in which he touted the number of companies rolling out Nvidia’s AI systems. The list of companies includes Atos, AWS, Cirrascale, CoreWeave, Dell, Gigabyte, HPE, Lambda, Lenovo, Oracle, QCT, and Supermicro.

As TechRadar’s John Loeffler points out, the increased demand for Nvidia’s chips in the AI market could eventually force the company to choose between the consumer gaming market and the more profitable commercial market. This could lead to a significant reduction in available GPUs, or it could lead to Nvidia pulling out of the market altogether.

Red Hat is a leading Linux and open source company, with its RHEL being one of the most popular enterprise Linux offerings and the backbone of the company’s hybrid cloud tech. The expanded partnership with Oracle will see RHEL running as a supported operating system on OCI.

“Starting today, customers can deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux on OCI and receive full support for these certified configurations from both Red Hat and Oracle,” said Clay Magouyrk, executive vice president, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. “Deepening our collaboration in the future will see us support additional products and workloads on OCI so customers have more flexibility.”

The two companies clearly see a chance to capitalize on their combined popularity.

Ninety percent of the Fortune 500 currently rely on Red Hat and Oracle solutions. For many of these companies, Red Hat Enterprise Linux serves as their operating system foundation and OCI offers them high-performing, mission-critical cloud services, to power digital-forward operations. Now these organizations are able to standardize their cloud operations with Red Hat Enterprise Linux running on OCI, which enables customers to gain a common platform that stretches from their datacenter to the OCI distributed cloud.

“Customer choice, from hardware to cloud provider, is a crucial commitment for Red Hat, whether these organizations are running operations in their own datacenters, on multiple public clouds or at the far edge,” said Ashesh Badani, senior vice president, head of Products, Red Hat. “Our collaboration with Oracle to deliver full support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux on OCI further cements this commitment to choice by extending cloud deployment options for our customers, and laying the foundation to make additional Red Hat solutions available to customers digitally transforming on OCI.”

The deal is a big win for Red Hat and its parent company IBM, as well as for Linux in general.

SymphonyAI is a leading artificial intelligence firm, creating applications that leverage AI to help businesses gain insights and educate their decision-making process. According to Zacks Equity Research, the company plans to use OCI services to further help it deliver real-time insights, combined with the cost-efficiencies of cloud computing.

The partnership is the latest in a long line of Oracle successes that have seen the company gain significant ground in the cloud market. While not in the top three, Oracle has increasingly been turning heads and gaining recognition for the value proposition it offers.

In fact, the company appears poised to be a big winner in the cloud industry in 2023, and this latest partnership is one more step toward that goal.

Oracle is not one of the cloud market’s Big Three — AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud — but has nonetheless made significant headway in the market, including scoring major contracts and poaching customers from its larger rivals.

According to Seeking Alpha, Monness, Crespi, Hardt analyst Brian White said the company was “well positioned” going into 2023. In particular, the company was a “steady hand in a treacherous market,” seeing less of a stock decline than many in the tech industry.

“In our view, no company is immune to an economic downturn; however, we believe the tailwind of the Oracle Cloud and the stock’s modest valuation provide some downside protection,” White wrote to clients.

Oracle’s stature was also boosted by its inclusion in the $9 billion multi-vendor Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability (JWCC), the successor to the abandoned Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contact.

White called it a “prestigious win” and says it shows just how much progress Oracle has made in the cloud market.